Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service had a tough 2nd quarter in 2023. The WBD services lost 1.8 million subscribers in just three months. Max now has a total of 95.8 million subscribers, according to the official earnings numbers released today.
This is down from the 1.1 million HBO Max, now called just Max, added in the 2nd quarter of 2023.
The best news here for Warner Bros. Discovery is its streaming services are almost profitable. Streaming losses are now just $3 million, an improvement from the $558 million lost during the same period last year. This comes after aggressive cost-cutting efforts. Warner Bros. Discovery also paid off over a billion in debt during the second quarter of 2023.
“The important work we are doing to transform our businesses for the future continues to drive our strong financial performance as demonstrated by meaningful improvements to our balance sheet and our now increased synergy target of more than $5 billion,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a letter to shareholders. “This quarter alone we reported over $1.7 billion in free cash flow, and we remain bullish with respect to our delevering story and expect to be comfortably below 4.0x levered by the end of the year and at our target of 2.5-3.0x gross leverage by the close of 2024. All of which positions us well to lean into growth opportunities that will ultimately drive shareholder value, to include our Direct-to-Consumer business, which, in the wake of the successful launch of Max in the U.S., is tracking well ahead of our financial projections, having generated positive EBITDA in the first half of the year.”
Warner Bros. Discovery did end the 2nd quarter of 2023 with $1.7 billion in cash flow. Overall year over year revenues were up 5% to $10.4 billion. Warner Bros. Discovery saw its losses shrink to $1.2 billion, up from a $3.42 billion loss in the 2nd quarter of 2022.
Recently Google announced that they had reached a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to offer NFL Sunday Ticket and Max from Warner Bros. Discovery at a special price. This was announced during Google’s 2nd quarter 2023 earnings call.
With NFL Sunday Ticket, NFL fans will be able to watch out-of-market NFL games. NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers will also be able to watch multiple games with YouTube TV multiview. You will also be able to watch condensed replays of each NFL game every week.
Sadly Google has not announced what the bundle price for Max and the NFL Sunday Ticket will be at this time. Currently, the package is still not for sale but should be coming soon.
A bundle offer like this could help Max regain positive subscriber growth.